Les Lamentations Du La Quatorzième
by Akky-chan
Summary: Younger son of a noble, my only talent in music. Perverse and with only my brother as an accomplice, the only goal is survival. I am number Fourteen, who never should have lived. Oneshot, isnt as bad as rating implies, Note - gone for a bit.


**Les lamentations du quatorzième – The wailings of the Fourteenth**

**Why french? 'Cause I actually knew some of the words (unlike Latin, where I am very stupid and cant understand anything past 'draco' . Thank you, HP )**

**Mutherfucker – Beck **

**It's soooo his theme song.**

**So... yet more delay material (no kill me please?) And I've been obsessing over the 14th lately, and I've been thinking about him before... he used to be a person, and he used to have a life... and as upset as I am that Allen's going to be turning evil (who am I kidding? I'm getting a kick out of that!) I was kinda wondering about the 14th and maybe what drove him to do it...**

**Yep. I've been thinking. That's not a good thing, by the way.**

**IMPORTANT: this story is being posted because, aside from the fact that I really wanted to make a story for the 14th, I'm leaving for a week and wont have internet, and since I couldn't get the next DC up yet, I'm putting the notice in here. I'll still be working on ALL of the stories, just in a notebook, not on a computer. That's why I wont respond to reviews immediately and why I wont upload ANYTHING in this next week. I'll see you later, though! Thank you for reading this!**

**Ps- this is only in M because all the minor warnings built up. It's not really all that bad, just a bit psycho, as usual.  
Edit//: WHY ISNT THE FOURTEENTH ON THE CHARACTER LIST IN THE ARCHIVE!? poor Fourteen really doesnt exist....**

Night 0

Prologue: The Dying Will

They said that Bonds— two bloody twins, _children_, as far as he was concerned— was powerful, but under respected. They could have, supposedly, done great things, had the _horrid, evil, darkened humans_ not gotten them first, mistreating them and turning them mad, calling them monsters. Monsters that knew God, for sure, who would ever think them strange at all?

So Bonds was powerful and under respected. He could understand that, he supposed, but he would still say he had been through worse than them. Oh, so much worse than them, he could assure the Earth. So much worse that hell itself was to to trifle with his loathe.

For Will was infinitely powerful, and yet, despised and unappreciated. Damn you, Bonds, for Bonds can never be broken, Will, however, can.

They were never to suffer the pain of becoming strong, they were never to suffer the strain of maintaining power, they were never to suffer the humiliation of loss and never to suffer the terror of the chase.

The Fourteenth was powerful, but he had never been strong.

A shy boy, elders had described him as, too timid to take on the world, hiding behind his brother so constantly. He would be good only to marry off into a rich family. He would do no good in business, he would do no good in travel and most likely he would even fumble at dancing. No girl could he charm, no conversation could he carry, and no fight could he ever win. He even had difficulty in reading and maths!

...But he could play music.

Trumpet.

Flute.

Lute.

Lyre.

Harp.

Viola.

Bass.

Guitar.

Violin.

Piano.

Name the instrument, and within twenty-four hours, he guaranteed he would have figured out how to play something on it, no matter how obscure or foreign the instrument, no matter how complex the notes or awkward the sounds. It was the only subject he could speak about without becoming tongue-tied over his words and lack of knowledge.

It was also the one thing that Mana always fumbled at horribly. Mana, the older brother, the perfect one with manners and sensibility and talent and patience, kindness, diplomacy, and striking with his bound black hair. Even as a child, more beloved than I and heir to the head of the family, Mana Walker couldn't play an instrument to save his life.

Oh, sure, he could dance better than I could, moving more gracefully while I stumbled. When singing he would be crisp and high and I would be low and shuddering.

But Mana could not play for the life of him. And he told me that every time I played. It made me feel important, more important than someone who's only talent was in music should feel.

Because musicians were drunkards, poor travelers who did nothing with their lives. Bards were common-men.

_But they knew the power of Legacy._

_The will of the departed._

_The ones who should live from the ones who should perish._

Because musicians were only great if they were the next Chopin, the next Beethoven, the next Bach.

But not a noble boy with a brilliant brother, a brilliant brother who would have to take care of him in the event of his little musical escapade not working. Of course it wouldn't, he was a _noble_, he wouldn't survive in the real world.

How on Earth was he expected to survive the pain of death? The pain of your insides being torn out and shoved down your throat, the blood flowing rapidly to your head and blowing out your brains. The revival was worse, your skin scalding like it was dipped in boiling oil, or the old western torture— boiling tar and goose and chicken feathers.

It was in a carriage.

"_Mana, there's something wrong..." I whispered. _

"_It'll be fine," He whispered, holding me close, "We're going to the doctor, we'll get you fixed up right away..."_

"_Mana, I don't think the doctor can help," Another hallucination flashed before my eyes. Visions of people shouting, raising morale, building the will to charge to their deaths in battle for their commander... they all perished so quickly. Brutally, and... "Mana, I'm burning..."_

"_No you're not, you're fine... you aren't on fire," Cannon fire, but the soldiers still stubbornly pushed on, muskets blew holes in their skulls. Tomahawks lodges in chests and skulls. Swords were drawn, a giant wooden horse entered the gates of a huge city. Men and women screeched for salvation, children refused to hail their parent's will. Their blood was so, so bright red..._

"_Mana, **I'm burning**! I'm going to die, MANA!" _

_Their Parent's Will._

_Will a shrill screech, the mysterious wounds on his head burst open again._

_Their blood was so, so bright red..._

The next three weeks from the time I fainted in the carriage to when the doctor sent Mana to bring me to a priest would be blurred between visions of my brother and the gore of past century battles, the hopes and dreams and shot down attempts of people's hopes lashing out and trying to gain in return for things they felt they deserved.

I think I saw the American Revolution.

The bloody streets of the Age of the Stuarts'.

Witch Burnings.

The Crusades. All of them.

The Crucifixion.

The fall of the Roman Empire.

Ancient fights I had never heard of even in myths.

I think I may have seen God Himself.

And I hated that more than anything.

The _rushes_, the _excess_ of information. The absolute _pain_, the thought that my brain would _explode at any instant....._

Those may have been the most terrifying three weeks of my life. When I was lucid enough to actually fear. Most times, I just cried out, screaming for him.

"_Mana, help... Mana..."_

"_I'm right here, I'm not going anywhere... don't worry, brother," His voice shook more than mine did as he clutched my left hand, the arm strapped painfully to the bed. "You'll be okay... we'll get you better soon."_

_I didn't believe him. But I wanted to, I swear I did... But I was scared. _

_Anyone who has come close to death knows this feeling, anyone who has seen someone close to death knows this feeling. The all-consuming terror that shakes your core, disrupting the very will to survive's certainty. _

_You knew death was leaning over your headboard. Not at the foot of the bed, but leaning over you, ready, scythe in hand, held up about to sink into your neck at any moment._

_It was a terror that made everyone cry. There was no way to stop crying once this terror seeped into your bones. There was no shame in it, only the feeling of isolation. Absolute isolation that only a human could break through. A human's touch._

_In the last moments of our lives, that's what we're thinking about. Lying to ourselves about. We want to be held in our final moments. I was no different._

_I was an average, pathetic human, who sobbed womanishly when confronted with my absolute demise._

"_Mana, help me, please..." I squeezed his hand as I begged. I begged my older brother to play the perfect angel and save me. "Maaanaaa...."_

Looking back, I would come to pity Mana more than myself on those terrible weeks. Mana, who had to sit back and watch me die, and yet, attempt to comfort be anyway must have been just as terrible or worse than what I had gone through. At times I thought he saw it the other way around, that I had gotten the bad end of the stick and he had gotten off easy.

We were guilty brothers with consciences the size of our Lady Britannia herself. We were close as children, and in return, we resulted as clingers in adulthood. I myself in late teens and Mana in his early twenties when my transformation occurred.

Even later, we didn't often speak of that particular time.

That was when the Earl came, at the end of the third week, when the seizures and nightmares had climaxed and Mana could no longer stop my wrists from bleeding even after I had stopped thrashing. The Earl finally came to take me away, tell of_ where I belonged_ and let me end my pains with him. With my 'newfound hatred of the truth of all humans' as my guiding light.

He and the child had come when Mana had run to fetch bandages, as the priest had decided all he could do was supply us lodgings and food after the first week. Mana was alone in trying to save his insane brother.

One of the few things I remember clearly is apologizing to Mana after every time. _"I'm sorry, brother,"_ I would whisper to him, because all I could truly manage after screaming for hours would be a small, hoarse whisper that may have never been heard had Mana not listened to my every breath with more love and care than my parents had ever shown me. _"I'm really sorry, Mana... so sorry..."_

But baring those few whispers, I couldn't speak. Only pant, whine, bleed and sob. That was the state I was in when the Earl appeared in the room, stepping through the heart shaped door that carved itself into existence on the wall.

I wasn't as shocked as I would have been were I in a right state of mind. So, instead I just stared at it, and the two people who came out of it.

I'm not sure what possessed me to look up at the large man, smirk and say, "So are you the Grim Reaper and his slut daughter?"

"No, you meanie!" The little girl shrieked indigently. "And I am _not_ a slut! Go suck a horse!"

In my dazed state, I barely registered the insult, thinking vaguely of marching into Spain and requesting a horse was a ridiculous thought. I would be slaughtered in an instant. The remark about her odd clothes however was very called for, though it was purely instinct based on the fact that only a _slut_ would wear something like that. I couldn't voice an argument, though. My whisper-voice was so quiet if I opened it, almost no sound came out.

Vaguely, I wondered why the Grim Reaper and a slut were in the room._ Oh wait,_ I had reminded myself, _I'm going to die._

"Children..." The Reaper hissed. "If you please would not bicker already, I would like to have a word," I remember a fuzzy thought floating through my head at that. Something like 'if I can talk' or 'I cant talk you...' But I digress. I listened to him, silently, and discovered, the Reaper, in fact, was not here to kill me. I was already dead, my heart had stopped and my lungs weren't truly breathing anymore. He hadn't come for my soul, though. He hadn't requested me sin in return for a resurrection, either.

In fact, The Earl, as I would later call him, only knelt at the side of my bed and undid the straps binding me down, releasing my bloody wrists, my bruised arms. I hadn't realized back then that my legs were being stuck with thousands of pins and needles, only that it was odd that I could feel something when supposedly I was no longer in existence, going only above or below based on whom I believed in. I was oddly not frightened about the trial, as certainly I would go to Heaven after my suffering.

The Earl did not say anything about Heaven or Hell or the trial yet, though, but once the binds were undone, I was absolutely sure that he was going to speak of it first. Of how I lived my short life, of the things I did right, the things I did wrong, my faith to God and the sin of envy towards my brother that I had held close my whole life and the greed of wanting something better. I had not yielded to lust nor gluttony though, and so rarely it was virtually nonexistent had I even had the _thought_ of injuring another in wrath. I was no sloth, and my pride hardly made itself noticed in my mind, and only when I was being ridiculed.

_'Surely... surely I will be fine in the afterlife,'_ I thought. Now, I would scoff at the very notion, but back then, it had made perfect sense that the Earl was an Angel of Death sent to steal me away to either Heaven or Hell. That I hadn't a thing to worry about other than Mana being alone now. The thought hadn't entirely risen to my mind at the time, but I would probably have dismissed it with the notion that 'he would be better without me' had it made itself known.

So, when the binds were lax and the Earl rose and pulled the cloth off my forehead, revealing _it_, I thought it was finally the end. That I was at the end. Despite three weeks of fear and anguish, I was calm before this... _Death Angel_, no matter how ugly and strange he was. That was _certainly_ what he was.

Mana chose that moment to come in. I don't entirely remember how he convinced the Earl to allow us to stay together, but if I asked Mana, he would have told me later. Though the memory is not my own, it is there. Something I now know.

"_Get away from him, you!" Mana grabbed a cane in the rack by the door and held it threateningly at the Earl, as though it were a sword. "Away from my brother, you cant have him!" The Earl did not move, and Mana stayed firm, holding the cane, his eyes darting between the large man before him and his younger brother, lying, looking lifeless on the bed, his pretty gray eyes iced over in a haze of a dying man._

"_I _said _back away from my brother, demon!" Mana took a threatening step forward._

_The Earl stiffened. "I am no demon, young man," His previously hunched over form straightened, fingers spread apart as his arms were firm at his sides. Despite supposedly attempting to not look dangerous, the Earl failed, he still looked absolutely monstrous. "I am attempting to aid your brother, in fact, I mean him no harm."_

_  
"Liar," Mana breathed, loud and clear enough to be understood quite well. The little girl in the corner scowled._

"_Don't insult Duke Millennium, filthy human!" She screeched angrily, looking as though she desperately wanted to pull out a knife and hack Mana's head off._

_Mana swallowed at the word 'Duke'. Was he dealing with another noble? A duel or maybe even an unintentional murder of an upperclassmen would make a stir. He wouldn't get away, his family's reputation could be permanently stained and he would be arrested and killed. His brother might be burnt as a witch if the public found him, noble or not. This church had been forgiving, knowing the two brothers were devoted catholics and it was impossible they were witches. The public may not accept the fact his brother was fighting a possession so well._

_Nevertheless, Mana did not waver his sword. "Away from my brother," The Earl finally did comply, silently admiring the human's bravery, even in the face of Road's temper. He would try to tame her, soon, but not before recruiting the child on the bed. The one who supposedly shouldn't have ever been born, as there was no fourteenth disciple._

"_I mean your brother no harm, as he is part of my family as well," The Earl said, his voice too high. Mana took quick steps across the room, still holding the cane, and standing in the space between his brother and the Earl._

"Your _family?" Mana questioned, "I don't recall having yet another uncle, numerous as they are, sir. Why are you here then?" Less tense now that The Earl was no longer looming menacingly over his brother, Mana's upper class accent came through clearly, attempting to be polite and yet menacing. Mana was doing it perfectly_.

That was when one of the few memories I have of that time happened. I felt a great surge of envy towards Mana, wanting to be him, thinking that somehow, if I survived that day, I could make myself even better than him. Even better than Mana Walker was an impossible task, because Mana Walker was certainly the most perfect person to walk the Earth.

But somehow, I felt I could manage it, if I tried. And I knew I would try it, somehow. Until it worked out.

My nerves numbed, muscles limp and mind weary, somehow, I managed to move my hand to Mana's pants leg and clutch it.

Apparently it had startled everyone in the room, as there was a collective gasp, or perhaps, that was my own dead lungs, struggling to breathe.

"_Please,"_ A single word and I didn't know anymore, and Mana would always end his story at this. He did insist though, that my single word was the only reason he was still alive after the encounter. Somehow, that word had become a plea for his life, our brotherhood, and the Earl had honored it.

I sigh within the confines of the boy's mind thinking about this. Now, I would never have believed the Earl honored anything, much less a plea for the life of a human.

Weeks, maybe months after Mana and I joined the Earl's 'family', I would learn that my plea had only extended to Mana. The doctor, the priests and nuns, the servants and our parents and close friends hadn't been spared Mana's fortune.

Sometimes, I wonder if I would be able to convince the boy to go to their graves, somehow, through the memory connection. I wonder if I could perhaps feed him a dream out of my memories and have him seek them out. I know it's useless though, the boy hates cemeteries. He's hated them for a long time now, and I've felt every ounce of his hate, all cooped up in his mind and left to steep like a bomb being made, and I know that when that bomb goes off it's the end of him and the new start for me. And I cant wait for it.

The boy an I have one shared hatred at least, and I will admit, only on the premise that otherwise I would be a hypocritical bastard just as much as the boy is (and personally, I dislike being even compared to him or talked about in the same sentence, but as we are technically the same person, that tends to happen more often than not).

That would be where the Earl fits into our lives.

The boy hates the Earl almost on principle, and, I grant I hate him on principle as well.

Not such a difficult thing to learn to do, especially if you are being kept sane by your only remaining family member who is forced to watch as you are used as a weapon of mass destruction. What's worse is seeing their face when you admit that, perhaps, in a deranged, unnatural way, you _enjoy_ how you're being used. That you know you're being used, because you know your real family from the ones that claim to be your real family.

_If they are my family and have always been, why were they not here for all of my life?_ I had wondered, _Why, instead, was it a crawling, insignificant human that makes me most comfortable? If they were my family, why make me renounce my religion, why make me a human killer? Why allow me and encourage my envy and greed?_

The thoughts were unpleasant, almost causing me physical pain on more than one occasion, when my head would split open and I thought I was reliving the transformation yet again, that I was doomed to suffering and death for yet another three weeks.

Mana was there for me each time the relapses happened. Not the Earl, not Road nor even the newer Noah who had awakened, Lulubelle, whom was still recovering from her transformation. Unlike me, she hadn't managed to get her trains of thought back yet, still wallowing in the memories of decades past. If I were to vanish suddenly and return, she would have little to no memory of me or my existence.

That was exactly what happened, in fact, and to this day he had not yet discovered whether Lulubelle recalled anything of him or not. But she was not the reason that he and Mana had run.

In fact, the reason came in the form a new Noah, one of the two sons of a Portuguese nobleman. His name was Tyki Mikk, and at the age of twenty-six, he had come down with sudden migraines and terrible violent seizures.

His dreams were probably of rape and bastards and the children left on the streets and in orphanages as a result. My own dreams consisting often of watching those same children struggle to survive, I felt sympathy for him.

I was accompanying the Earl, creating a gateway for him when he went to fetch the new Noah. It was then that my sympathy doubled, would that be possible. When the Earl was stroking his black hair, pretty black hair, curly, like an Irish woman's, but not red, I learned something about Tyki Mikk.

He was a younger brother as well.

"Get away from him, you!" Though it was Portuguese, I understood, not because Noah can understand any language thrown at them, but simply because the ring was the exact same tone Mana would have used.

"I _said_, back away from my brother, demon!" Memories I had forgotten in pain and fatigue prodded at my consciousness, telling me what happened like my memories had fused with my brother's. Like I had been sober at the time. Where my memories failed, my brother's gripped me, and I could hear his voice each time the older brother spoke. But this older brother had a sword, and that was the only true difference between the encounters as far as I knew. As far as my small knowledge of those few minutes was. Not that it made much of a difference, because the Earl had a sword as well, one that I was certain was much more powerful than the older brother's rapier.

"I am no demon, young man. I mean your brother no harm, in fact, I am attempting to aid him," The Earl said in Portuguese, and I was certain that was almost the exact same wording he had used years ago, in that church.

"Liar!" The brother barked, but before the sense of déjà-vu could take me farther, a woman with pale white skin and long black hair burst into the room.

"Excelentíssimos Senhores, por favor, não briga! Por favor, Tyki está a recuperar!" She cried, rushing to the beside where Tyki lay, shivering, sobbing like only a dying man could.

It was in the moment that the name "MARÍA" was yelled out by the brother and the girl lay dead on the floor that I realized how thin a line Mana had toed that night. How easy it would be for him to die. With a twitch of the Earl's wrist my only connection to sanity an coherent thought would be cut off, leaving me to wallow in gore and sadistic joy.

I didn't want that. Not at the expense of my brother. My one, my only brother. _My_ Mana.

"Por favor..." A weak voice called from the bed. "Sheryl... por favor..." The older brother quivered, his knuckles turning white on the sword. "Por favor, por favor... Sheryl... por favor..." The older brother tossed the sword to the side.

"Tyki..."

"Por favor, Sheryl, por favor..." The sword slid towards me, stopping at my feet, and yet I had eyes only for the brothers.

"_Please," A single word and I didn't know anymore, and Mana would always end his story at this..._

...because no younger brother had to know that their older brother, their idol got down on their knees to beg at the feet of a God for their brother's lives. To plead that they not be separated. Promise their very souls to the Earl, as long as their brothers were not taken away from them...

In a moment, I was flying at the Earl's back, the brother's rapier in my hand.

And for a moment, I think I may have seen God Himself.

000

My end was finally coming in the store room of an burning ruin of a house in a small town. The flames were creeping closer and I was trapped under a pile of ceiling rubble. My chest was heaving and nothing on me wasn't stained red with blood or brown with mud. I was a filthy, filthy rat, in my last moments of life.

I reached for Mana's hand, he lay motionless farther away from me, his face aged harshly with years of stress and worry while mine remained young as a reminder of the genes in my body, the monster that lay within. My most likely matched the gold and red flames around me, molten in color and bloodshot. I liked Mana's eyes better. I liked his pretty brown eyes better than mine, whether they were pale blue or bright gold, his eyes had always looked better than mine had.

My hand shook and fell to the quickly heating floor. I sighed, my dead chest sucking in air but not truly breathing. I closed my eyes, golden, for what I hoped would not be the last time, despite the fact that death was once again leaning over my head, scythe ready to slash into my throat.

And I searched. I searched for a person to take, to control, to use. Years and years ago, I wouldn't have dared even dream of using someone as a puppet for my own means, and yet, the years had twisted me. No longer a child who dreamed of being a bard, but a man who wished for nothing more than death and then nothingness. Oblivion would be nice, as long as Mana was there with him. Hell had no sway over him, no more than Heaven did. He had abandoned all religion long ago, it only caused troubles and wars.

And so, I was searching. Searching for a creature with enough will to keep me alive, enough will to be able to survive my subconsciousness's intrusion once I died, someone who could carry my soul and my memories and not break. Someone who would live long enough to die, so that I might live again.

But the wills of the people in this place seemed either too weak or the strong were so far away that I couldn't reach them. But I tried, I tried so hard that the resulting migraine almost scared me, making me remember three horrible weeks again. The edges of my mind were cracking with the strain of expanding the network.

Then, I glazed something.

I shifted focus, not in all directions around me but in one single direction, in a straight line, directly towards the strongest thing I had found so far. I cared not if it were an animal, even a mangy canine in the fields of some far off no-name town.

But for a moment, the will I had tracked almost killed me. Killed me early, in any case.

When I struck the consciousness head on, it was as through someone had took a sledgehammer to my head, shattering my skull and shuddering through my body like a wave.

That was the will to live.

And I claimed it as my own.

"Are you dead yet?" The gruffness of the voice was familiar. My eyes opened slowly, ever so slowly, I recall. It never ceases to amaze me how clear this memory is compared to some of my other, somewhat more important ones, but are not the final moments of one's life important? I suppose that may be the reason, for though the rational part of my mind had known that I was not in fact dying, the other part of my mind had been telling me this was it, and that it had to be recorded, for whatever reason you must record the final moments of your own life.

I personally do not like this automatic feature of the human mind, as little-known-of as it was and still is.

And so, my memory, far too sharp for an average memory, tells me that I opened my eyes painfully slowly as the gray color drained from my face.

My blue eyes watered as the smoke invaded them, my breath shallow and hurried. Noah were not immortal, and even with fire could be killed. We were so average we had to profess to be above others. That in itself should have been the obvious flaw in the Earl's superiority complex.

"Pft, not often you see a Noah dying," Cross had dawdled, María's corpse behind him, her long black hair in a bun and her white skin contrasted by a ruby-red lip liner, a mask and black wrapped bandage covering up where the top of her head had been severed from her body by the Earl's sword. I remember her natural beauty easily, and she was even more gorgeous while alive. I still wondered how Tyki had ever managed to get a fiancée like her. It was a pity they could never marry, because she had been given innocence, and yet, he was a Noah. To this day I wonder if he ever got over her, or if he ever even knew what she was.

"At least I see a beautiful girl before I go," I had muttered, my breath coming with great difficulty, partially because of the smoke in my lungs and because of the pressure and gap wound on my chest. The rubble would slow down the bleeding at least, and even though my lungs had truly only moved on bodily instinct, they were still painful to breath through many times, and if I were to hold my breath, I would never have been able to talk.

"Are you insinuating that I am womanish?"

"No, stupid womanizer, I meant Maria."

"You think corpses of girls are beautiful. You have a sick, twisted mind, my enemy," A trademark smirk from Cross was something I did not need this sharp, clear memory to remember. He had worn that expression so often around me that when I recall his face I see it on him without realizing it.

"Hey, Cross, do me a favor," I said, ignoring my own situation. I had already take care of it, and though I would greatly miss Mana, I had been ready to leave my body, my dead, bloody body, far behind. In a pile of ashes if that's what it took. "Get Mana the fuck out of here."

"And you will..." Without even arguing, Cross began to pull rubble off Mana's limp and bloody body before hoisting the older man over his shoulder effortlessly.

"And I will come back. Later. In a different body," Was my exact wording. "I'm not sure when but..."

"You're planning to _die?_" Cross had demanded. I sighed, rolling my blue eyes.

"Yes, but hopefully, it wont be a Heaven-or-Hell situation, my dear priest. I plan to die here, yes, but that doesn't mean that I wont be back."

I remember this moment better than any of the others in my life, probably because the smoke was choking my lungs and my blood was starting to run out, the flames creeping ever closer to where I lay, fearless of my true death. Fearless of the Grim Reaper looming over my head, wanting to make sure he caught me this time, even though he wouldn't ever catch me.

"Take care of Mana," I whispered urgently, feeling the end coming at a pace that my human side could never have delayed for long. "If you do, I'll come back to him."

Cross scowled at my statement. "You'll come back to him? This brat sees you as his life, he wont last without you, you know."

"Cross, Mana's older than you, but yes, I know Cross, I promise, I'll come back... I'll come back to Mana, but promise me _you'll help him_ survive until then. Promise _me_."

The was a pause, a scowl, a worried swallow and a glance over my decimated body and the encroaching flames. My chest was stabbed through and crushed, I was suffocating slowly and would burn alive before anyone could pull me out of the rubble.

And Cross realized that I couldn't keep running like this, I'm sure to this day that was exactly what went through his mind. My life had only ever been worse in those three weeks of supposed possession by demons, back when Mana and I had been naïve, hoping to live perfectly normal and prosperous lives. Even if one of us had to live of the other occasionally.

But that night was the end. With a soft "I promise, kid," and the retreating form of Cross, my brother, and a beautiful corpse, my life ended, the flames creeping onto my numb and motionless form while mind was somewhere far, far away

In another city

On the other side of Britain

In a small town

With a child

Who knew nothing of what just transpired far away from him

In a place he would probably never know

And that everything in his life had just been set to death

And I couldn't feel the slightest bit of pity for him

Because in the end

He was my only hope of ever seeing him again

My Mana


End file.
